Fibre rotation motion in homogeneous flows

Abstract

The rotation of an inertialess ellipsoidal particle in a Newtonian fluid has been firstly analysed by Jeffery [15]. He found that in the case of the shear flow the particle rotates such that the end of its axis of symmetry describes a closed periodic orbit. Below the effect of particle inertia on the rotary motion of a slender fibre in uniform flow fields is discussed. The equations of motion and the constitutive equation for the hydrodynamic moment are introduced. These equations are solved for various flow fields. For the plane flow fields with dominant vorticity (elliptic and rotational flows) the effect of inertia is a slow particle drift toward the flow plane. © Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2008.